FrankenJeep

It has been nearly ten years since we last spoke. Remember, we just did the math a few days ago in How Long Has It Been?

Anyhow. Let me give you a little rundown of the last near-decade.

Yes. We deserve that. FIVE SHOPS?! How many projects? Did you say you bought a house? 30 Chickens? Who the hell is Russell?!

Okay. Hold on. Nine plus years is a lot to unpack. I will try to be concise about my information, but I will try and satiate your need to know how Mad Mac’s has been doing over the years. [Spoiler alert: I sold the LLC]

YOU WHAT?!?! Wait… You actually turned Mad Mac’s into an LLC?

Hold on. I will get to all of this. But first, where to start?

I continued to work with Jack, at Sick Customs. His lease was coming to an end at that particular shop, and before that happened he got us working with another place, and we were working under the roof of Brown’s Classic Autos. We ended up bringing over a lot of our old customers to do work through Brown’s. We made some really good new contacts, but more so, we were now able to have the funding of a larger shop that allowed us to hone our skills, and even learn a few new ones.

It was at this time that my family moved into the rental house in Mesa [Oct, 2017].

When the pandemic hit, we were let go from Brown’s, and we were left to figure out working life. Jack had decided to do business under his own roof this time. He found a suite next to an airport and started doing business again.

We tried to endure through the pandemic and somehow, we seemed to manage. When my wife and I were starting to get serious about buying a house, I left Sick Customs to work for the State of Arizona [Oct, 2021] for a stable paycheck. Custom car building can be lucrative at times, but more often, makes it difficult to tell the bank you are good for a house loan.

I worked with the AZ Department of Transportation for a little while. The work was mundane, but there were a few little surprises here and there that made it bearable.

Anyhow, I was still tinkering with my projects when I got a call from this place called “Nikola” [Oct, 2023]. Yes THAT Nikola. In case you are unaware, this guy had a great idea to build Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) Class 8 semi-trucks. They actually performed really well. Unfortunately, his Steve Jobs / iPhone rollout impression needed some work, and he leaned a little too much into the “roll” portion of the rollout. If you want to know more about that story, Google is your friend.

Needless to say, Nikola filed Chapter 11 and was bought out by Lucid [Oct, Just kidding. Apr, 2025]. It was at that time when my wife and I finally got serious, and we bought our first house.

I mean, why not? I had a really good paycheck consistently coming in for the last year and a half, we had a bunch of money set aside, and both of us were rocking solid mid-700 credit scores. Also, a part of the buyout was that Lucid had to maintain 300 employees from Nikola. They ended up keeping almost 500. My whole team was a part of that employee keepsake.

Currently, I work for Lucid as a Prototype Technician as a part of their Engineering Department. We work in the Arizona Research Department, or ARD, on the projects that you will not get to see for another 2 or 3 years. It also means that you will not get to hear much about that job. Not that it matters a lot, anyhow, it would just be a lot of redactions and blacked out photos. However, if I can manage to get a legal reason to say something cool that relates to my job at Lucid, you bet I will!

But, I know that you did not start following this crazy adventure because you thought that one day, you might be able to get some inside information about a car company that had barely started, and literally nobody knew about. So, we will keep these stories on the task at hand, at least, as much as I can.

While working at Brown’s we worked with a lot of really cool things! Amongst them were:

These were just a few of the many projects I got to work with. There were so many more! From the few Rolls Royce Phantom Clouds, to the Lamborghinis and Ferraris, to the 1964 Ford Falcon that someone decided to paint Corvette red, and it got called out on the block at Barrett Jackson! There was plenty of material to cut your teeth on here. If you did not leave here better at your craft, then you obviously were not trying at all.

When we got into the new shop, as Sick Customs, we worked with even cooler things!

You can see that the project choices were a little bit different from the things we were doing at Brown’s. But, at the same time, you may have noticed that they are still pretty much the same. Tomato, tomato. We definitely had more fun building at the new shop, where our creativity was allowed to flow more freely.

While working at the Department of Transportation, I got to work with some neat things:

Most of my time at ADOT was pretty mellow, comparatively. It was mostly 2015 Impalas and F150s. However, every so often, they let me work on some really cool things. So, I guess it was not all boring.

While at Nikola, I really did have a good time. It was too bad things went down the way they did.

I will not get into the story of Nikola here. If you would like to know what happened there, that information is available on the internet.

This brings us to the current job – Lucid!

I got these photos off the internet, all rights belong to Lucid. In fact, you can find these photos and more information on their website.

We will be visiting some of these stories in the future. Plus, I will expand on this multi-part post with family life and some other things that have gone on shortly. But for now, I just wanted to get you a quick update to what has been going on.